Thread by @Silpayamanant

I am so excited to see "The Wonderful Kingdom of Papa Alaev" as part of the National Library of Israel Film Festival in November! I've spent the past 11 years exploring and performing music of the Bukharan Jews, this is just really exciting!

docutext.nli.org.il/movies/hmmlkh-…

I've spent the past 11 years learning the about the repertoire of that region of the world and the pst 3 years have been arranging music for @EnsembleSulh to perform in collaboration with the Crescent Moon Dance Company--a project we call "Raqs Maqom."

https://twitter.com/Silpayamanant/status/1314192682152071168

It's been one of the most rewarding musical experiences of my life--and in some cases some of the msot difficult music I've ever had to perform. For example, this image is from a performance of "Doira Dars," a 5 minute tune I spent 6 weeks practicing every day to learn (by ear).

Doira Dars were a set of 5 "Etudes" designed by Tamara Khonim & Yusuf Kizikjon in the 30s to train dancers/drummers in the basic rhythms. We performed the 5th which is the last of the 5 year cycle & has well over 20 rhythmic modes & half a dozen shuk (transitions).

...as I was traveling/touring a lot for gigs at the time I would sometimes spend several hours using my steering wheel as a makeshift "Doira" and practice while driving.

Here's the 4th year Etude to give you an idea how it works with the dance.

And to see what a Doira/Dance duet looks and sounds like, there's no better place than to watch the magnificent Ustad
Abbos Kosimov and the wonderful Tara Pandeya in performance at the Ethnic Dance Festival in San Francisco, 2007!

Due to Pandemic--our May 24, 2020 Raqs Maqom event had to cancelled. We were so looking forward to sharing music/dances from the Uyghurs, Tajiks, Turkmens, Uzbeks, and Khorezms. But alas, here's a pic from our 2017 performance Persian court style dance to music by Mortazavi.

One of the most remarkable things about learning the rep of classical Central Asian music is how much I’ve had to rely on visual cues from dancers. Since so much of the music is learned by ear I used the movements as visual cues in lieu of a “score” to remember rhythmic patterns!

There are actually so many interesting things about the Central Asian classical dance/music music traditions. Learning that different dancers choreograph to very specific arrangements by different musicians for ex. You have to know the right arrangement of a tune for the dancer.

And something else I've learned over the years working in many non-Western traditions. Counting isn't really a thing. It's abt rhythmic modes/cells/cycles, not meters/bars.counts. Sure, counting/translating in a reductive Western way is possible, but usually of no practical use.

Re: specific arrangements. When we performed a trad Pashtun mahali, "Sab Zina Reng," w/ dancers we had to do the right tune AND arr., which is usually passed fr master dancer via recording. So, this isn't the one we learned, though it's a popular version.

I then had to arr./orchestrate it for @EnsembleSulh & translate the *mogholi tal* into a relatively recognizable meter for primarily Western trained musicians. Fortunately, the percussionists are familiar w/ variant bol-type aural notations so that's how I taught them the cycle.

Training Western trained (whether classical trained or pop trained) musicians to think in rhythmic modes is actually far more difficult than training to hear/reproduce alternate pitch modes. This always brings me back to the implications of this old study.
sciencedaily.com/releases/2005/…

So much of this carries over into the pop musics of non-Western countries--not just the classical/folk musics. It's taken me years to get over only being able to fit things into the narrow WAM/WPM metrical mode structures. This was one way to do it.

https://twitter.com/Silpayamanant/status/1319264551343476736